Ex-boyfriend of Jayden Parkinson jailed for life

A violent and controlling man has been jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years for murdering his 17-year-old pregnant ex-girlfriend.

Ben Blakeley killed former Colne Primet High School pupil Jayden Parkinson in the countryside on December 3rd – 24 hours after she told him she was expecting his child.

BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE.
Undated handout photo issued by Thames Valley Police of Jayden Parkinson as police have been given more time to question one of the two people arrested on suspicion of murder in connection with the disappearance of the 17-year-old girl. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Saturday December 14, 2013. Jayden, from Oxford, has been missing for nearly two weeks and Thames Valley Police said they are keeping "an open mind" about what has happened to her. A 22-year-old man was arrested at an address in Reading, on Thursday night. A police spokesman said officers were granted a further 12 hours to question the man, giving them until 4.30pm. A 17-year-old boy was also arrested after he attended a police station in Oxfordshire on Friday afternoon and remains in custody. Jayden was last seen in the Iffley Road area of the city in mid-afternoon on December 3 and failed to return home that evening as planned. See PA story POLICE Teenager. Photo credit should read: Thames Valley Police/PA Wire
N

After strangling the teenager, Blakeley buried her body in his uncle’s grave at a cemetery in Didcot, Oxfordshire.

The former binman was obsessive and controlling and threatened to post intimate videos and photographs of Jayden on Facebook after their break up, hoping she would kill herself as a result.

A jury at Oxford Crown Court found Blakeley guilty of Jayden’s murder following a five-week trial by a majority decision of 11-1 after more than 20 hours of deliberations.

Blakeley (22), of Reading, Berkshire, had denied murdering Jayden but admitted her manslaughter.

Judge Patrick Eccles QC said Blakeley had spun a “web of lies” to cover up what he had done.

He said: “It required a heart of stone to keep up that pretence and a heart of stone to deal with her body in the way that you did.”

His brother Jake Blakeley (17) admitted a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice by helping to dig the grave in which Jayden was later buried.

The jury of six men and six women was dismissed on Friday having failed to reach a verdict on whether Jake Blakeley, of Didcot, prevented a lawful burial for Jayden.

The judge said: “On December 3rd you took Jayden Parkinson, a complicated but loving and vulnerable 17-year-old girl, into open countryside in the dark of an early winter’s evening and murdered her by strangulation.”

The judge said that “unreasonably jealous” Blakeley’s treatment of Jayden had involved “physical and emotional abuse” during their relationship.

“You dominated and controlled her daily life,” the judge said.

“You removed her phone so she couldn’t contact others and when she was at the hostel you demanded that she stayed in her room, even to the extent of forbidding her from using the toilet, forcing her to urinate in a plastic bottle.

“Jayden was infatuated with you, her violent abuser, and found it difficult to separate emotionally from you.”

The judge said Jayden finally plucked up the courage to end the relationship in November, with Blakeley threatening to pose intimate photographs online to “humiliate” her.

“Unfortunately she discovered that she was pregnant and you were the father,” the judge said.

“Being a decent young woman she wished to inform you of that fact.”

The judge said the pregnancy was the only reason Jayden met Blakeley on December 3rd.

“At the time you were in my judgement consumed with anger having found out that Jayden had been intimate with another young man after she had broken off her relationship with you,” he said.

The judge said Blakeley murdered Jayden without thinking of the possibility she could be carrying his unborn child.

The judge told Blakeley: “You first concealed her body in a ditch. It is clear that you later decided to move her body.

“In the early hours of the morning of December 9th, you returned to the ditch and dug up Jayden Parkinson’s body.

“You then crammed the mortal remains of poor Jayden into a suitcase.

“You then persuaded an unwitting taxi driver to transfer her body to All Saints’ Church in Didcot.

“You had dug a grave for Jayden over the interred body of your Uncle Alan.

“To your twisted mind, you might have thought a graveyard was a better place for Jayden to be buried than a ditch in a field, but there was no respect or remorse in this hasty interment.”

The judge said Jayden’s father had died shortly before the trial and must have been “haunted” by what Blakeley had done.

He said Blakeley had caused upset to the priest, congregation and family members of those buried in the graveyard by the “sacrilege done there”.

The judge also jailed Blakeley for eight years for attempting to pervert the course of justice, to run concurrently with his murder sentence.

Members of Jayden’s family shouted “See you in hell” as Blakeley was led to the cells.

She thanked Thames Valley police officers and prosecution witnesses during the five-week trial, in particular Blakeley’s ex-girlfriends, who showed “immense courage in attending court to speak of his sick and twisted mind”.

“From the day that Jayden’s life was so cruelly taken, the kindness shown to us by the people of Didcot has been immeasurable,” she said.

“Over the months we have also found strength in the messages of support from strangers around the country and indeed worldwide.

“We will never be able to find an ounce of forgiveness for the evil that murdered Jayden and then concealed her body in such a cold, calculated and callous manner.

“For us as a family, today is not the final chapter in this tragedy. But now we can at least begin the challenge of coming to terms with the heartbreak which we all feel, and the rebuilding of our lives.

“We can never erase from our minds the pain that was inflicted on Jayden, nor can we erase the image of Jayden’s battered and bruised body. We will never be able to celebrate birthdays, Easter or Christmas with Jayden, and we will never get to see Jayden grow up, get married and have children - this is our life sentence, it’s now time for Ben Blakeley to start his.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Burnley Express provides news, events and sport features from the Burnley area. For the best up to date information relating to Burnley and the surrounding areas visit us at Burnley Express regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Burnley Express requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.